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Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

reuters.com

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Re: Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

#111

Post by pdonis »

tom_wilde wrote: post #99
pdonis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any action is clearly going to beat sticking ones head in the sand Not if the action makes things worse than they would have been if you'd done nothing. And given our very poor understanding of how the climate and ecosystems work, any action we take that is not an obvious benefit (like "bring more people out of poverty" or "make our infrastructure more robust", both of which are things we certainly should be doing)…

Reduce / Recycle / Reuse Tell me which of those is going to make the situation worse?

Reduce makes it harder for people to come out of poverty.

Recycle costs energy.

Reuse should be ok, as long as whatever it is is in fact reusable.

But these three hardly cover all possible actions.

Re: Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

#112

Post by pdonis »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #89
pdonis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an increasing number of extreme weather events due to climate change This is not correct; the number of extreme weather events is not increasing. The damage they do is increasing, but that's because the human population in areas exposed to such events, and the value of the property build in such areas, is increasing.

"New data confirm increased frequency of extreme weather events, European national science academies urge further action on climate change adaptation" https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-inc...

No link to a peer-reviewed paper, let alone any explanation of where this "new data" came from or why we should consider it reliable.

Re: Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

#113

Post by decebalus1 »

The biggest problem I have is that we're not going to have a proper dystopian collapse of civilization/raider/zombie/fight-for-resource type of thing. Most likely just a cvasi-police-state-corporate-run boring dystopia (which we already kind of have) managing and partitioning remaining resources/habitable locations.

Re: Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

#114

Post by Gravityloss »

MiroF wrote: post #19
caconym_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we need more evidence to act? What are we waiting for? We're waiting for a reversal in the apparent worldwide collapse of liberal democracy, I guess. Probably climate change and said collapse will feed into each other. The way most oligarchs and their toadies are wired, I think they're more likely to look to pull the ripcord for themselves rather than spend big on best-effort change for everyone else. Dismantlin…

Your mistake is assuming that democratic consensus will spur the kind of action we really need. Once voters realize that this would take personal cost for benefits they won't see in their lifetime, I can't see them willfully voting for any substantial reversal.

In a stable society situation, money tends to go to money and power tends to centralize.

Thus probably the rich enough can protect themselves and their children from climate effects. They can sacrifice the pawns. What's a hundred million refugees if they can prop up their coal investment for another decade.

Re: Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

#115

Post by simonh »

transreal wrote: post #78
Mikeb85 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm in Alberta, Canada, and I guarantee 95% of voters here would choose increasing oil production vs. any sort of climate action. We just had a pretty bad recession, our unemployment is still above typical levels, and we just had an unseasonably cold summer after a pretty cold winter. It's not an issue of being brainwashed, people really do prefer having jobs and homes over climate targets to fix a problem that…

This is why I really like Andrew Yang for 2020. He wants to give everyone in the US $1000/month so people don't constantly have "the economic boot on their neck". You can't worry about climate change when you are worried about paying bills and feeding your kids.

Wow. That’s not going to cause massive, crippling hyper inflation at all, is it.

Re: Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

#117

Post by dougmwne »

api wrote: post #96
dougmwne wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. This is actual pretty decent speculation(minus the conspiracy tinge). Global warming is absolutely going to kick off a period of high geopolitical instability. Geopolitical in the classic sense of the geography. The borders of our countries, populations, alliances, and economic base are all tightly coupled to the natural resources of each country. Those natural resources are about…

Thanks, but what "conspiracy tinge?" Planning for likely future conflict scenarios is what governments and militaries do. They have entire departments full of people who do it full time. It's not at all unreasonable to think they've looked at climate change and the possible outcomes and that powerful factions within government (and elsewhere) may have come to conclusions like what I wrote.

You lead with the idea that people in power have made a secret decision to do away with democracy and deploy totalitarianism. This is by definition a conspiracy. The rest of what you said, plus what you just said about departments of people already looking at this I find quite realistic.

Someone else just posted this 10 year old video on the geopolitics of climate change. I wanted to make sure you saw it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY

Re: Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

#118

Post by pkaye »

GVIrish wrote: post #103
MiroF wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mistake is assuming that democratic consensus will spur the kind of action we really need. Once voters realize that this would take personal cost for benefits they won't see in their lifetime, I can't see them willfully voting for any substantial reversal.

> Once voters realize that this would take personal cost for benefits they won't see in their lifetime, I can't see them willfully voting for any substantial reversal. Luckily renewable energy is getting to the point where it actually saves money over fossil fuel based energy. People might be loathe to move to electric or fuel cell vehicles, but costs are coming down there too, not to mention that many governments ar…

The ICE vehicle bans don't seem realistic. If they set a goal like 10% sales first year, 20% next year etc, then I can understand a goal for a total ban in 10 years. Sometimes politicians set unrealistic goal expecting they won't be involved by the time the deadline reaches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...

Re: Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

#119

Post by nitrogen »

simonh wrote: post #115
transreal wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I really like Andrew Yang for 2020. He wants to give everyone in the US $1000/month so people don't constantly have "the economic boot on their neck". You can't worry about climate change when you are worried about paying bills and feeding your kids.

Wow. That’s not going to cause massive, crippling hyper inflation at all, is it.

If people being able to feed themselves would cause unsustainable inflation, then we have bigger problems.

Re: Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast

#120

Post by NeedMoreTea »

pdonis wrote: post #112
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"New data confirm increased frequency of extreme weather events, European national science academies urge further action on climate change adaptation" https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-inc...

No link to a peer-reviewed paper, let alone any explanation of where this "new data" came from or why we should consider it reliable.

It's all in the PDF they helpfully link at the very top of the page, along with references. They also link the 2013 report that it is an update to.
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